Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 12:18 am**

Hi,
New to the game,
Basically I can't dock and don't know how to. The buttons in the manual that help you dock appear to oly work for docking computers which I don't think I have. At the moment my ship is inside the docking area of a space station rotating relative to it but unable to do anything. Occasionally one of the wings of my ship hits the floor or ceiling.

What do I do.

Cheers

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:03 am**

I can't believe they still let plebes out of the Academy without teaching them basic maneuvers... *grumble*

Alright, Harmless, here's a step by step quickie manual on manual docking; best to practice this in Lave orbit before you make your first real flight.

Signal for launch. When you're in the clear, you'll see ahead of you a round red and white object, the Nav buoy. Every main station has a Nav buoy hanging below it a few meters away.

Fly towards the Nav buoy, gradually cutting your speed as you approach. You want to ease up as close to it as you can, close enough to almost kiss it. But don't kiss it, you'll get funny looks from trying some unusual mating traditions on a Nav buoy.

You'll want to cut power to zero and come to a dead stop here.

Now, from this position, turn towards the station. Get the center of the station's docking port lined up in your sights. Once that's done, give your Cobby a little throttle.

About halfway to the station, start rolling your ship to match the station's rotation. Tweak your course as necessary. Be careful, a little tweak goes a long way.

Lather, rince, repeat, till you can dock without breaking a sweat.
And if you still think it's difficult, I'll let you watch a vid of captain Hesperous landing a Python tailfirst.

-- Derik 'Wyvern' Rohi, who can manual dock in his sleep

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:16 am**

Hi BALEOG

At the moment my ship is inside the docking area of a space station rotating relative to it but unable to do anything. Occasionally one of the wings of my ship hits the floor or ceiling.

If your are in the space station dock forward movement "w" key towards the landing lights should allow you to dock.
I remember the first time I played Frontier elite I didn't think I would ever be able to dock. Still hit walls and roof on occasion but it can be forgiving.
I prefer using mouse control (shift m) than the keyboard.
My docking Procedure.
Up towards the navigation buoy and stop, for a newbie docker go right up close 5 or 600 meters. Turn and line up the docking bay so it is centered in your aiming reticule and move towards.
As you get closer your will see the vertical and horizontal landing lights. To make a clean entrance you need to have all 4 in view.
As you get more confident you will be able to come in quicker. I normally come in at a little above half speed unless I'm being chased then I'm a little quicker.
Flying right up to clean ships and getting in formation with them is good flying practise.
Docking Computers are handy but too slow.
When I first started playing Oolite I spent quite a bit of time just practising docking at Lave, in and out and in again, you get the picture.
Any player of this game need to be able to manually dock. Many times I have had the computers destroyed in battle, so if I couldn't manually dock I would have lost all those kills.
Hope this helps

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:03 am**

OK Thanks,
That worked.

Another question.
When IK arrive at a new system it takes ages to get to the docking point, space station or whatever.

Is there a way to speed this up?

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:35 am**

Your problem is that your jumpdrive is gettin' masslocked by all the slow traffic in the spacelane from the witchpoint beacon to the spacestation. If you want to get there fast, get out of the the traffic!
Easy to do. When you arrive at the witchpoint, turn at 90° to the planet (the planet icon on your space compass should be right near the outside edge), hit the jumpdrive for 30 seconds or so. That will take you well outside the spacelane, it is waaay quiter out there, and you should be able to point towards the planet and be able to jumpdrive all the way.

HTH

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:10 am**

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:
Signal for launch. When you're in the clear, you'll see ahead of you a round red and white object, the Nav buoy. Every main station has a Nav buoy hanging below it a few meters away.

10 km, actually. :-)

Code: Select all

> system.mainStation.position.distanceTo(player.target)
10000.005859375

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:50 am**

Ahruman wrote:
Cmdr Wyvern wrote:
Signal for launch. When you're in the clear, you'll see ahead of you a round red and white object, the Nav buoy. Every main station has a Nav buoy hanging below it a few meters away.
10 km, actually.
Code: Select all
> system.mainStation.position.distanceTo(player.target)
10000.005859375

Well, 10000 metres may be "a few" to someone used to interstellar distances...

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:32 am**

Commander Mysenses wrote:
That will take you well outside the spacelane, it is waaay quiter out there, and you should be able to point towards the planet and be able to jumpdrive all the way.

Was until I added deepspace pirates

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:08 pm**

bob19 wrote:
Commander Mysenses wrote:
That will take you well outside the spacelane, it is waaay quiter out there, and you should be able to point towards the planet and be able to jumpdrive all the way.
Was until I added deepspace pirates

Well, who's fault is that then?

Captain Hesperus

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:18 pm**

Captain Hesperus wrote:
Well, who's fault is that then?

Captain Hesperus

Proberly yours, like allways

..

goes back to find that last trumble, must have excellent camouflage gens... now kind ehh... you dastardly python rider

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:47 am**

Captain Hesperus wrote:
Well, who's fault is that then?

Thought it was a good idea at the time. Certainly spices things up. Run out of witchspace fuel last night chasing one bunch of no goods then got jumped by a mass of them. That was a short battle.

21 gun salute for commander bob.

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:48 am**

bob19 wrote:
Captain Hesperus wrote:
Well, who's fault is that then?
Thought it was a good idea at the time. Certainly spices things up. Run out of witchspace fuel last night chasing one bunch of no goods then got jumped by a mass of them. That was a short battle.
21 gun salute for commander bob.

It's funny, because it's true.

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:12 pm**

ClymAngus wrote:
bob19 wrote:
Captain Hesperus wrote:
Well, who's fault is that then?
Thought it was a good idea at the time. Certainly spices things up. Run out of witchspace fuel last night chasing one bunch of no goods then got jumped by a mass of them. That was a short battle.
21 gun salute for commander bob.
It's funny, because it's true.

Yep, heard that story before. Along with: "Met up with a mass of pirates the other day. I was loosing badly, shields down, Witchfuel all used up, no missiles, so I dumped my E-bomb on them. I hadn't even started scooping their cargo when the scanners picked up another six red blips....."

Captain Hesperus

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:09 pm**

Those spare fuel tanks do come in handy at times, for when you really really need to get the frak out of Dodge.

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:00 pm**

I was jumped by a group of Adders with mil lasers, marked "Gang member". Ouch. Had to make an undignified exit. It's starting to look like having an arse made of iron just isn't good enough...

Oolite Bulletins

Hi Please Help Me to Dock

Hi Please Help Me to Dock